At www.icla.jp, we are starting our 2nd Handmade Samurai Armor Project @iCLA 2016. This is only open to iCLA students and professors, but I will be posting information and photos that show how the project is progressing, as well as useful links for learning more about Samurai Culture.

This year's NHK Taiga Drama Sanda Maru has proven extremely popular, and NHK for the first time has created an English language site with 5 minute video digests of each of the 50 episodes as they unfold. There is a tremendous amount of historical information, as well as photos and profiles of the cast, and interesting historical sites you can visit. A superb site and a great dramatic tale of true events.

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A poem is born, or reborn?

May 1987? My teacher Morioka Koshu paints a Tehon for our monthly Shodo magazine in the Sogeikai in the 1980s, and of course I have kept them all as a treasure.

Feb 201730 years later I meet Rogier Uitenboogaart in the mountains of Kochi at Yusuhara, where he himself has been making Japanese Washi paper by hand for 30 years!

April 2017Almost exactly 30 years after I first saw the Tehon shown here, my friend Iwamoto-san at iWeave kindly presents me with the work I painted in February, wonderfully mounted on a scroll, which now hangs in my office.

Here is my translation of the the Chinese poem:

Laughing in the Spring breezeThe dancer swirls in veils of silk.This is the time to drink up!How can you leave now,When we have hardly begun?

I am not sure who wrote the original Chinese poem, but I have an idea that it was 白居易 Bai_Juyi, a Tang Dynasty poet from about 1200 years ago.

A poem is born, and reborn across time and many communication platforms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_Juyi​

Author

William Reed is a full time professor at iCLA (International College of Liberal Arts) Yamanashi Gakuin University in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. He is a 7th-dan in Aikido, and a Shihan in both Shodo and Nanba Jutsu. He teaches these arts at iCLA, in addition to a course on Spiritual Dimensions and Traditions in the Japanese Martial Arts. Detailed Profile on the About Page.